There is significant research and development interest in fabricating functional nano-bio interfaces for biomedical applications including advanced scaffolding1,2, programmed differentiation3, biocompatable device surfaces4, sensors5, etc. Progress in the discovery and isolation of uniquely-bioactive nanostructured surfaces has been severely limited due to the time and material intensive evaluation approaches currently practiced. Typical cell culture assays require days to weeks to perform and animal model studies can take weeks to years. Both normally require, at the very least, millimeter scale nanostructured materials, which can be a challenge to produce uniformly at those length scales and is often prohibitively expensive for screening applications. These barriers are further confounded by the shear plethora of possible nanoarchitectual configurations. The current approach to isolate potential structural candidates has been to look to nature and attempt to copy—this is tedious, time consuming, and often not cost effective. Moreover, limitations in current characterization technologies do not always allow for adequate interpretation and mimicking of nanoscale biological surfaces. With the exception of the enclosed invention, to date there are no methods for rapidly screening and isolating nanostructures that may exhibit unique properties in biological systems. Moreover, there exist no systematic methods for identifying structure-function correlations that can be used to forewarn of potential hazards as well as engineer ‘smart’ nanostructures for eliciting a specific bio response.